APA Dictionary of Psychology

a growing clinical specialty area combining aspects of health psychology and sleep disorders medicine. Practitioners include psychologists, physicians, nurse practitioners, and other health care professionals certified in the discipline who seek to understand the cognitive and behavioral factors that contribute to the development and maintenance of adult and pediatric sleep disorders and who use this knowledge to provide empirically validated, nonpharmacological interventions. For example, a BSM practitioner would help a client with insomnia to fall asleep faster, wake up less frequently, and sleep more efficiently using specialized behavioral and cognitive techniques that normalize the person’s sleep schedule and condition them to see the bedroom as a restful place.